Amazon Loses 1-Click Patent

Amazon's 1-Click (or One-Click, OneClick, various people use different names for it) patent application has just been denied in Europe. Again.

Dispassionate obervers like, umm, myself, always thought that it was a pretty odd patent to grant. Once the concept of cookies which hold information about visitors is understood, the idea that such information might contain payment information, thus allowing one click payment methods, seems pretty obvious. Then again, I'm not a patent attorney.

The full ruling on the European 1-Click patent is here. as one explanation of the case points out:

"The Board has reviewed the analysis of the features of [Amazon's patent claims] in the decision under appeal in the light of [Amazon's] arguments and agrees with the examining division that they lack inventive step," the EPO appeals board said in its ruling .

"The Board does not consider that the idea of reducing the number of steps necessary to make an order would contribute to inventive step," the EPO said.

Note that the patent was never awarded in Europe in the first place: this is the ruling of the appeals court on the matter.

There's two points that flow from this decision. The first is that we've now got very different patent law for the US and for Europe. For this 1-Click patent is valid in the US, Amazon have sued under it (Barnes and Noble) and they are also licencing it (to Apple). One of the things we were all rather hoping for was that patent systems would converge, not separate, that we'd be able to work with just the one system rather than a smorgasbord of different systems around the world.

The second is that as the patent doesn't stand, Amazon cannot licence it nor charge royalties for it. Whether this will actually make any financial difference or not is another matter. Perhaps they were charging the likes of Apple fees in Europe, on the grounds that the patent might become valid, perhaps they weren't. And perhaps the level of those fees which might or might not have been charged are so small as to not actually matter to anyone.

Which leaves us simply with European companies being able to have one click checkout methods and American ones, those American ones without a licence from Amazon, not able to.

Which, if we're honest about it, is hardly going to change very much, is it?